<VV> Snake Oyl

[Dale Smiley CPBE]

    I first ran into this at a car show on Chicago's Navy Pier back in 
the early '60s. This thing is, as has been said a 'spark gap' added to 
the center tower of the distributor. The secondary output voltage of an 
ignition coil will continue to increase until it reaches the 'ionization 
voltage' of the plug gap. When the plug fires, the voltage rapidly goes 
to zero. If the plug(s) is (are) fouled then the voltage will be bled 
off and the plug will never fire. What our friendly salesman is doing is 
adding a fixed gap that will cause the coil secondary voltage to reach a 
higher than normal level before it 'fires' passing this higher voltage 
on to the plug.

    This higher voltage 'can' (no guarantee) clear a badly fouled plug, 
or make a spark jump a plug with a gap too wide for the normal ignition 
output to fire. One of the tricks they used was to install plugs with 
very wide gaps, ones that would run the engine with the 'miracle device' 
installed, but would be marginal at best without it. This was, of 
course, done well before the suckers...err..customers, yeah that's it, 
arrived! BTW, back in the day, JCW and others sold plugs with a built in 
additional gap for worn engines that were using oil and constantly 
fouling the normal plugs. They worked for a while!

    The guy at Navy Pier had an old six-cylinder engine with an old 
mechanical speedo connected to show the 'speed' of the engine. No tricks 
were needed to make it change readings, the device was doing as 
advertised on THAT engine. I learned from a friend who had watched him 
set up for a different show that he took a couple of hours to get the 
plug gaps just right to get the effect he wanted. So, was it Snake Oyl, 
or not? It DID help a little if you had a marginal ignition or worn 
engine. Now we just throw in an Ignitor and get the better results with 
no points!

Dale Smiley
Indianapolis
'66 Corsa 180 Turbo